“Budgets have been cut and psychiatrists feel they can’t follow the official guidelines, which recommended therapy before drugs are prescribed. In the UK, often the first response now is to issue drugs, not offer therapeutic help,” she told the Times Educational Supplement.

Despite official guidance that the psychotropic drugs, which include Ritalin, are unsuitable for those under six “hundreds” in this age group are being given the medication, including those as young as three, Ms Hill said.

Her group - which will talk to parents, children, teachers and experts about young people with mental health needs – will also examine why children from poorer backgrounds appear more likely to be prescribed with medication.

NHS figures show that the numbers of prescriptions for Ritalin quadrupled from 158,000 in 1999 to 661,463 in 2010.

But without support which addresses the cause of the problem, drugs may have little impact, warned Ms Hill who is Director of Professional Educational Psychology Training at the University of London’s Institute of Education.

Professor Tim Kendall, director of the National Collaboration Centre for Mental Health, added that there had been a move toward parent training programmes, but these were disappearing with the “squeeze” on local authority and NHS budgets and social care

“There has been a rise in the use of methylphenidate (Ritalin) on the basis that there hasn’t been much else available,” he said.

The BPS is not the first body to raise concern about the use of Ritalin, and in the past experts have warned against the number of young children being prescribed and the strength of the medication which is used.

Although the long term effects on young children have not been established, it can cause nausea, fatigue and mood swings and has in the past been linked to suicide.

There are fears from the US that drugs companies are exacerbating the excessive use of the psychotropic drugs.

Professor Allen Frances, emeritus professor at Duke University in North Carolina and an expert in mental health diagnosis, has claimed that the use is “out of hand”, and although some of the medication is necessary its use is “stimulated by aggressive and misleading marketing by drugs companies”.